"Yes; you shall have a splendid bouquet to-morrow."
"Your gardens will be quite devastated, Mr. Haveloc," said Mrs.
Fitzpatrick.
"That will be of no consequence," he said.
"I wish, Mr. Haveloc," said Aveline, "that you would shoot me a partridge, I should like it for my dinner."
It was the first of September. Now if she had asked him to shoot her a golden eagle, it would have been just as much in his power. He was too near-sighted to shoot; and moreover he had not applied for permission to shoot any where that year. He looked to Mrs. Fitzpatrick for a.s.sistance.
"You know, my love," said her mother, "it could not be in time for your dinner to-day."
"Yes; I would wait for it," said Aveline. "The truth is," said Mr.
Haveloc, "I am no marksman, my sight is so bad that I could not distinguish a partridge on that walk."
"You say that only to teaze me;" said Aveline, "you can always see mamma when she comes out of the avenue."
"But then your mamma is something larger than a partridge," said Mr.
Haveloc.
"Then I am to go without it, I suppose," said Aveline.
"No, for I will go to the next town and bring you one."
"And what shall I do without you all that while;" asked Aveline impatiently.
At this moment, Mr. Lindsay appeared at the drawing-room window, and joined the party on the lawn.
"What are you all caballing about," he asked.
"Aveline has a fancy for a partridge, Mr. Lindsay," said Mrs.
Fitzpatrick; "how shall I get one?"
"I have brought one with me," said Mr. Lindsay, "I left it with your cook."
"I am glad you did not depend on me," said Mr. Haveloc, "I should have blundered over the turnip fields all day, and brought you nothing."
"Well, do not you find it very warm," said Mr. Lindsay, "beautiful grapes you have! Where do they come from?"
"Taste them, doctor," said Aveline, "Mr. Haveloc brought them."
The doctor looked at Mr. Haveloc, gave a slight shake of the head, and tasted the grapes. He believed him under the illusion of an attachment to Aveline; for middle-aged people are apt to consider the affections as illusions. But he pitied him, as he would have done any one suffering under a nervous complaint, for he knew that while they last, nervous complaints are as definite as the loss of a limb.
But soon these fits of irritation disappeared altogether; she became placid, grateful, tender; her strength was ebbing away.
Mr. Haveloc came in the morning, only to depart at night. His attention was unremitting; and Aveline seemed only to live in his presence. To wait for his coming; to kindle into life at his footstep; to rest for hours content to look at him; to talk to him on religious subjects, in which he became the learner, and she unconsciously, the teacher. These privileges as she considered them, soothed her later hours, and softened her pilgrimage to the grave. It was not the "Valley of the Shadow" to her. She possessed the sacred support, the healing consolation of a profound religious conviction, which she had not delayed till that hour to seek and to enjoy; and her sickness had purchased for her what she never could have obtained in the days of her beauty and health--the companionship of the person she loved. And, always in extremes, he devoted himself to her comfort with a zeal that astonished Mrs.
Fitzpatrick. He seemed to know intuitively how to arrange her flowers--to move her pillows, how to amuse her when she was calm, and to be silent when she was weary. He knew how to draw her attention from her mother on those rare occasions when Mrs. Fitzpatrick gave way to a burst of sorrow. He was her confidant in those trifling arrangements for the future with which she was unwilling to disturb her mother"s feelings.
And to her subdued and serious state of mind, her attachment to him took the quiet colour of her other thoughts. She knew that she had done with life; and her affection for him was such as she might carry beyond the tomb.
And thus subdued by illness, yet sustained by the brightest hopes, she tranquilly awaited the moment when her Angel should summon her from the earth.
CHAPTER XII.
_Soph._ You powers, that take into your care the guard Of innocence, aid me! for I am a creature So forfeited to despair, hope cannot fancy A ransom to redeem me ... ...
... ... Was"t for this he left me And, on a feigned pretence--
THE PICTURE.
It would be too adventurous an incident to introduce if this tale were an invention instead of a narrative of facts, that Mr. Grey was ordered by his physician to a part of the coast very near to that where Mrs.
Fitzpatrick"s cottage was situated. Not a mile of rough hilly ground divided their dwellings from each other. This choice of a _locale_ was very easily accounted for. Mr. Warde was acquainted with Mr. Fletcher, the clergyman of the parish, and wrote to beg him to select a house for his friend. Mr. Fletcher did his best, but houses were not plentiful in that district. It was a pretty cottage, but really deserving of no other name. Mr. Grey did not enjoy it at all; he missed the luxuries of his own house. The cas.e.m.e.nts did not shut, the chimnies smoked. There was no piano for Margaret, and Land"s room was so small as to be a daily source of disquiet to his master. He was more annoyed for others than for himself. Little did Margaret think when she went down to the sea-side every morning, and sat patiently by her uncle"s chair with her book and her work, that the person who most occupied her mind, was within so short a distance, engaged in the same sort of pursuit, in watching over the declining health of a friend.
But her uncle grew weaker and more restless; he determined to return to Ashdale; and having once fixed the day, he seemed more comfortable in his mind.
"Do you like the idea of it, my child?" said he to Margaret, "shall you not be glad to get back to Ashdale?"
"Very glad, Sir," returned Margaret.
"It must be dull, indeed, for you," said Mr. Grey in a pitying tone, "not a single soul here that we know. We might, to be sure, know the clergyman; but he gets a holiday exactly at the wrong time, and the man who does his duty for him does not live in the place. Not a shop to be seen, nor anything for the child to read but the paper; and that she does not care about, poor little thing."
"Oh, uncle! if you were well I should not find it dull," said Margaret, "I should enjoy the sea and the beautiful rocks above everything. But when there is anything the matter, one always feels safer at home."
Mr. Grey smiled, and said something as he went away about wishing to see Cas.e.m.e.nt again, in which desire Margaret could not join.
As it was his habit to rest in his own room during the afternoon, Margaret took her work into the porch, and sat enjoying the sea breeze, and watching the picturesque road that wound beneath the cottage along the sh.o.r.e. She had found out that when the mind is anxious and distressed, the best thing she could do was to work. Her thoughts could not be compelled to study, and her needle pa.s.sed the time a little more calmly and quickly than when she was doing nothing. And now a labourer might be seen driving a cart drawn by a yoke of oxen along the rugged way; and then a couple of children carrying between them a basket which they had been sent to fill at the neighbouring village; and but for such rare pa.s.sengers, the road was quiet all day long. While she sat, thinking of the one subject that filled her mind when she could divert it for a moment from her uncle"s illness; thinking over all that Mr.
Haveloc had ever said and done at Ashdale, she saw, advancing up the path a figure that made her start and colour, it was--she felt sure of it--Hubert Gage.
He was walking very fast, opened the rustic gate himself, and hastened up to her.
Her first thought was a fear about Elizabeth.
"Bessy is well, I hope?" said she eagerly.
"Quite well. At last I see you again! How difficult you have made this to me! How impossible it was at Ashdale to gain speech of you even for a moment!"
"Have you long returned from Ireland?" said Margaret, feeling greatly embarra.s.sed by the tone of her companion.
"Long? This instant! As soon as I learned where you were, I followed you."
"And Bessy is really well?"
"Bessy? Yes," said he in a tone of impatience. "Let me speak about yourself. Margaret, you have done me a great injustice, and you have not given me the means of defending myself. You have thought me incapable of loving you as you deserved."